David Powner, former director of IT Issues at the Government Accountability Office and director of strategic engagement & partnerships at MITRE, discusses possible changes to the federal data center policy, and looks back on FITARA’s progress.

The Office of Management and Budget is working to consolidate government data centers, and released a draft of its policy last month. Comments are in on the policy, and the early consensus is that agency and industry concerns were heard. David Powner, former director of IT Issues at the Government Accountability Office and director of strategic engagement & partnerships at MITRE, says that a good thing about the draft guidance is how well it aligns with Cloud Smart.

“After about a decade of doing this, this all started back in the 2009-2010 timeframe, if agencies can’t optimize government-owned data centers after a decade… there is this thought about cloud offerings and infrastructure as a service, and I think the policy did a nice job pulling that together.”